The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  “As to that, sir,” the major answered, sipping, “I’m afraid I couldn’t hazard a guess.”

  Epilogue

  LSS Trafalgar, docked;

  Outbound Station, Gamma Hydras, Hydra Border Zone

  Five tumultuous days, filled with rampant celebrations, frantic work and wild talk. The celebrations were dying down, but the work continued unabated. None were yet sure what would come next, but whatever it was, the men and women of the fleet were determined to meet it with their ships titivated to the nines. If that was being done, to an extent, with just paint, plaster, and imagination, some battle scars being too deep to fully heal in so short a time, so be it—and woe betide anyone with the bad grace to take notice.

  The wild talk swirled as thickly as ever too: there were already rumors of a ceasefire, and just that AM, they’d received word that Bannerman President for Life had been assassinated. No one was sure what to make of that, either. A sizable minority preached that it was all too good to be true, and held up the fact they hadn’t receive any official orders yet as evidence. Kris felt they might have a point.

  Taking her off-watch alone in her berth—Dance had celebrated his way into sickbay; Tole was there with burns (he was unlucky like that)—she was in a mood to believe the worst. The euphoria of five days ago had leached out, leaving a disturbingly cold sensation of hollowness behind. She couldn’t explain it or trace its origin, or say what was missing. Trying to look ahead, she found herself peering, not through a glass darkly, but through nothing at all—a blankness, a sense of negation, as if the future had somehow been annulled.

  It set her teeth in edge. Getting up, she went to her locker and pulled out her DMB. Opening it, she retrieved Mariwen’s letter and sat back down at the desk console. Holding the crisp paper in both hands, she turned it over twice—eyes skimming the words there:

  The moon has set, and the Pleiades;

  Midnight is gone,

  the hours wear by,

  and here I lie alone; alone . . .

  Alone. The Pleiades. Midnight. Gone. Alone . . .

  Alone. Gone. Yeah—

  Her entry pad chimed. It was Huron.

  “Yeah,” she called out and the door slid aside.

  “Am I interrupting?” He was looking at the letter held loosely in one hand.

  She glanced at it, and skimmed it onto the desktop. “No.” For a span of seconds neither of them spoke, then she brushed the fingers of her left hand through her hair. “Somethin’ up?”

  “Not exactly. I’ve got some news.” He standing just inside the entry, practically on the threshold and she felt an uncharacteristic uncertainly in him.

  “Good news?”—forcing a smile-like bend of her lips.

  “For some people—definitely.”

  “What about us?”

  His shoulders moved with a breath. “Kris—” He let the breath go. “Nestor Mankho’s dead.”

  The almost-smile froze. Then: “How?”

  “Special op.”

  The smile unfroze. Her eyes didn’t. “That all you’re gonna say?”

  “That’s all I can say. For now.”

  She nodded and picked up Mariwen's letter; started tapped it randomly against her palm. “Thanks for tellin’ me.”

  “Are you okay, Kris?”

  Five seconds worth of staccato taps. “Yeah. Jake.”

  “Alright”—still in that uneasy stance, one hand on the entry-jamb. “You’ve got downtime accrued. Don’t be shy about taking it.”

  “Uh huh. That’s—” Looking down, she refolded Mariwen’s letter. “Yeah, maybe so.”

  He stretched his shoulders. “I’ll put you in for it.”

  “Thanks.”

  He stepped out of the entryway with a nod, and it closed.

  So he’s dead.

  Standing, she put the letter gently back in her DMB and closed it.

  Dead.

  Staring sightlessly at the heavy metal case, rubbing her palms along the top of her thighs.

  Goddammit.

  * * *

  Kris executed a neat pirouette and sent a vicious forehand shot into the center of the black target square. The gamemaster, tracking the ball’s trajectory and evaluating Kris’s position and follow-through, put the next target low down and to the left—a next-to-impossible shot. She’d programmed the gamemaster for the most difficult solo game, a level or two above what she normally played. Leaping, she managed to cut the return, but it was a weak backhand and although it hit the target, the ball bounced sullenly off the deck and died beneath her racquet as she lunged.

  “That’s impressive. I’ve never gotten much above a dozen, myself.”

  She scooped up the ball and turned to see Huron at the back of the court, surveying her score on the gamemaster’s display.

  “I didn’t know you played”—tossing the ball in her hand, breathing hard.

  “I guess that remains to be seen.”

  “Lookin’ for a game?”—noting he was dressed in a black exercise rig, just like her.

  “If I’m not intruding.”

  She wiped the sweat off her face with the back a forearm. “You’re not. Get a racquet.”

  He did.

  Kris reconfigured the court for a singles match and bounced the ball across the deck to him.

  “Here. You can serve first and I’ll give you an extra fault.”

  # # #

  Asylum

  It sates itself on the blood

  of fated men,

  paints red the powers’ halls . . .

  Black become the sun’s rays

  in the summers that follow;

  weathers all treacherous.

  Do you still seek to know?

  And what?

  Völuspá, Stanza 41, the Poetic Edda

  Beginning of the End

  LSS Trafalgar, on orbit

  Epona, Cygnus Sector

  “Lieutenant Junior Grade Loralynn Kennakris, for conspicuous gallantry in engaging an enemy of superior force, above and beyond the call of duty, the Secretary of the Navy, with full support and concurrence of the Plenary Council, is pleased to recognize your efforts in the action taking place on the twenty-first day of the tenth month, by the Terran calendar, in the year five hundred forty-two by modern reckoning, during the victory of the Battle of Wogan’s Reef, so named, and contributing materially to said victory, by an augmentation of . . .”

  Lieutenant Commander Rafael Huron, Kris’s commanding officer, stood rigid and silent on LSS Trafalgar’s hanger deck, where all hands had been mustered for the awards ceremony, and listened to Commander Isabeau t’Laren, Trafalgar’s executive officer, read out the peroration in a strong clear voice. If you listened just to her tone and not the stilted, convoluted, archaic, and overdone verbiage, it was possible to get a proper sense of the somber gravity and import of the occasion.

  The whole ship’s company, including himself, did look somber and grave, as well as rather splendid since everyone was in their holy No.1 rig. Rear Admiral Lo Gai Sabr, waiting to present Kris her award, was resplendent in midnight blue with a wealth of gold braid and a chest full of medals that might have looked awkward on another man of such small stature, had that man lacked the admiral’s towering presence—a presence subdued, or rather masked, on this occasion but still evident in his obsidian eyes. Beside him stood the tall figure of Captain Jan RyKirt, Trafalgar’s imposing CO, shining in slightly lesser glory next to his task force commander. From there, the ship’s officers stretched away in glittering wings on either side, in order of seniority.

  Huron was not waiting in these wings but at front and center of the ship’s company because as an SRF officer he was assigned to the ship, not of it. He was also shortly to play his own part in this ceremony, although in his case, he was being given not a decoration per se, but merely the formal notice of what he was to receive: an augmentation of his Senatorial Cross, an honor which had occurred only twice before. As the highest honor the Nereidian League
could bestow (it could only be granted by an official act of acclamation from the Grand Senate), protocol demanded the Speaker of the Grand Senate herself pin it on him personally. With all the arrangements that ceremony demanded (to begin with, it had to be held at Nereus, the League capital on Mars), it could not happen for another month.

  Despite both being awarded for the same action, the disparity between this honor and the one Kris was receiving—clusters added to her Distinguished Flying Cross—hinted at some omissions and outright lies in the official citation which Commander t’Laren was reciting. First, the award was not being given with the full support and concurrence of the Plenary Council, as Huron, with all his political connections, knew very well. Far from it.

  Admiral Sabr had recommended Kris for a Senatorial Cross, which garnered the endorsement of the sector commander in chief, Admiral Joss PrenTalien, who had forwarded it to the Chief of Naval Operations, Fleet Admiral Carlos Westover. Westover duly submitted it to the Speaker, Hazen Gautier, and in the normal course of events, it would certainly have been approved. But the recommendation was unprecedented for a person of Kris’s status and origins, which caused resistance and raised unfortunate questions about the proposed recipient’s history. The situation was not helped when Fleet Admiral Westover resigned and was replaced by Lian Narses, the CinC of SOLCOM. Admiral Narses was less eager to recognize an obscure young colonial officer, especially one with serious questions in her past, and while she did not quash the recommendation, she let it be known that her support was, at best, lukewarm.

  Next, it was not spelled out that the “enemy of superior force” had in fact outnumbered them by thirty to one: he and Kris had attacked, unsupported, a formation of sixty Halith fighters and attack craft, killed twenty with half a dozen more damaged, and caused the entire formation to retreat before reaching its target. The thrilling victory, almost unprecedented in history, had been widely reported for weeks after the battle, with Huron’s name prominently repeated, along with the comment that he was aided by “a wingman.” It would not do, in the eyes of the media (or of certain military factions), for Homeworlders to be affronted with the exploits of a young colonial ensign—a woman from the Outworlds, no less—with an “unspeakable” past; a past that was literally unspeakable, as much of it could be found only in sealed records that a mere handful of people had ever seen. Huron thought this probably did not bother Kris much. She had as little use for most Homeworlders as they did for her.

  What likely rankled more was that her victory over Captain Jantony Banner, Halith’s most successful and revered ace, had also been elided. The victory had been confirmed just recently, but through means which couldn’t be publicly acknowledged, so it was officially listed as “unconfirmed.” The report that Banner had been “lost” at Wogan’s Reef was a transparent fable, produced by Halith’s propaganda organs to cover up the fact Kris had defeated him at Miranda a month before. Whether he was still technically alive was a murky issue (there was evidence on both sides), but he was now officially “dead”—or rather, “missing in action,” as heroes must always be—departed to a mythic realm where they could rest until an “hour of need.”

  That Halith had taken this remarkable step should have been sufficient evidence of Kris’s victory, but the fable provided just enough distorting gloss for pernicious official doubt to get a purchase. Unless it could be conclusively shown that Banner had not been present at Wogan’s Reef, it must be presumed (so officialdom sorrowfully pronounced) that the outcome was uncertain or, at best, a draw. Unhappily, officialdom droned on, protocol required more than a supposition—it required a “fact.”

  Nor had the situation been helped by Kris herself, who was standing there with the endless-seeming stream of words rolling past her ears, her feet planted as if her boots were welded to the crysteel deck. The peace brought about by Wogan’s Reef was an undoubted blessing, but Kris could not see it that way. These past five months had been filled principally with frustrations and disappointments, both large and small, public and deeply personal.

  Deeply personal was the death of Nestor Mankho, killed on Cathcar by a select team of freelancers led by the retired Nedaeman Chief Inspector (and former marine) Nick Taliaferro and planned by him and Commander Trin Wesselby, director of Pleiades Sector Intelligence Group. Outside the team of operatives, Kris and maybe three other people knew about it, and she only knew that Mankho was dead. How it affected her, Huron wasn’t sure (she’d once tried to kill Mankho herself), but her quiet reaction seemed to mix a puzzled sense of loss with a degree of bitter frustration or sense of interruption: a need snatched away that left her groping. Whatever it was, it was the opposite of closure.

  Even worse than Mankho, Huron suspected, was the situation with the Bannerman Confederacy. The Bannermans were the last major slave state and had been staunch allies of the Dominion of Halith, until their fleet (or what was left of it after a severe mauling) had been captured entire at Wogan’s Reef. In the aftermath, the Bannerman President for Life was assassinated and a widespread purge of the leadership ensued (helped along, it was believed, by the Halith, who stood to lose even more if some prominent Bannermans decided to talk). The new leadership (much the same in its essentials as the old leadership), kowtowed to the League in abject obeisance, offered all manner of concessions, foreswore slaving, and begged for succor. In due course, and after much public moralizing, they got it.

  Admiral Westover had resigned in protest, giving substance to the outrage felt by millions of CEF personnel, but Kris hated the Bannermans as only a young woman who’d survived eight years of brutal slavery could. Her reasons for fighting and sacrificing were more varied and nuanced than the simple predatory urges most ascribed to her (as Huron and a few others knew), but seeing her mortal enemies welcomed into the fold and coddled was most certainly not among them.

  The fury of an ensign, however fervent and justified, counts for nothing in the halls of power and would never have been noted, except that the Grand Senate insisted the Bannermans’ pledge to emancipate all slaves and forbear from further dealing be verified as a condition for any rapprochement. A commission was formed to study this and recommend how such verification be carried into action. Kris, by virtue of her past (no slave had ever before been repatriated after so long), knew more about the Bannermans’ slaving operations than anyone in the Colonial Expeditionary Forces, perhaps anyone in the League.

  This was made known to the commission, and Kris was encouraged (though not without some private misgivings) to consult. She did, producing a series of sterling recommendations. The commission presented these, along with their other findings, to the Speaker, who accepted them with much praise, consulted with her political allies, and then—after a heated private debate within the Plenary Council itself—did next to nothing. Thus was Kris made acquainted with the scabrous underbelly of the League’s power structure, where certain actors, while not engaged directly in the slave trade, nonetheless profited from its penumbras. These persons, some of whom controlled prominent merchant houses, also saw fresh business opportunities with their new allies and did not want them further disrupted.

  Kris’s response was predictable, and under the circumstances (despite Huron’s best efforts), it was noticed. This made it doubly unfortunate when, a short while later, they both became embroiled in a diplomatic incident. While on a routine sweep in Winnecke IV, she’d detected an anomalous drive signature. As they closed in for a better read, the ship—some kind of merchantman—took off like a startled hare. Kris and Ensign Basmartin gave chase, and when it refused to lie to after several warnings, Kris had winged a drive node. The chase then lay under their guns while Huron came up with the rest of the squadron.

  The ship did scream slaver. It was an old, heavily modified, over-engined transport, and the master’s excuse for fleeing was that he couldn’t properly ID the fighters and had feared for his life. It was a much simpler—and better—story than the bullshit these guys typically served up. U
sually it was cryogenically maintained embryos (frequently cattle for some reason—Huron had not yet heard anyone claim to be transporting sheep embryos or chicken eggs), vital medical supplies, or rare spices, once even “secret Maxor herbs” for making expensive perfumes: all items that could not be physically inspected without damaging them. They’d heard those stories dozens of times, and the way the words tumbled out of this guy as he blotted the sweat off his splotched, glabrous face did nothing to convince Huron he was any different, except in sticking to a somewhat more plausible story.

  But in this case, the master could back it up. When a survey found nothing and he produced his authenticated registry, cargo manifests, and bills of lading, all in perfect order and duly issued by the Sultanate of Andaman and Nicobar, officially an ally, Huron had no choice but to apologize for the inconvenience, restrain Kris—leading to an ugly private scene between them—and call in a fleet tug to fix the damaged node. Then, with more expressions of regret and Kris’s comms locked down to prevent her from being charged with mutiny, they sent him on his way. Huron and Kris each filed a report on their part in the incident, perfectly accurate as far as they went. Captain RyKirt and Commander Sonovia Harmon, then Trafalgar’s Director of Strike and Reconnaissance Operations (informally, the DSRO or fighter boss), had approved them, and that should have been the end of it.

  But it was not the end because the offended ship’s master, who had the Sultan’s royal ear, submitted a complaint to this ear. The Sublime Porte then protested to the League Ambassador, who informed the Foreign Office, who forwarded the grievance to the Plenary Council, who sent a strongly worded notice to the Secretary of the Navy, who expressed serious displeasure to the new Chief of Naval Operations, and from there the shit flowed downhill and would certainly have engulfed a few junior officers like Kris—bombastic pronouncements were being flung about by certain politicians allied with the Speaker, along with threats of courts martial—had not Captain RyKirt spread his official umbrella and sent back against the tide both reports, along with a full set of flight recordings and his and Harmon’s endorsements. That put an end to the threats but raised Kris’s profile even higher among those who had little cause to wish her well. Even those within the CEF began to feel that a lethal cannon, even if running loose, was a fine thing in wartime, but one who abused her “betters” and provoked diplomatic incidents during a shaky peace imperiled by touchy negotiations was another thing entirely.